In many Christian religious services, small communion cups containing wine, grape juice, water, or the like and small quantities of bread are distributed to the participants. A wide variety of communion trays have been developed over the years for this purpose.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (a.k.a., the Mormon Church) makes available to its congregations bread and water communion distribution trays of standardized design. Although in the past, trays fabricated from stainless steel were available, only trays made primarily of polymeric engineering thermoplastic resins are currently available. As there have been no complaints with respect to the standard bread distribution tray design, the present invention relates, specifically, to modifications of the standard water distribution tray. The water distribution tray that is currently in use is made of three thermoplastic components: a tray bottom having a floor and a perimetric wall used to hold discarded miniature drinking cups; a U-shaped handle that is secured to the floor of the tray bottom; and a tray cover, having a downward facing perimetric rim, that fits over the U-shaped handle and snaps onto the upper edges of the perimetric wall. The tray cover incorporates an array of some three dozen circular apertures, each of which is sized to hold a standard-size miniature drinking cup. Normally, each congregant takes a filled cup, drinks the contents, and then discards the empty cup into the tray through large openings in the array that are positioned in line with the handle, at each end of the array and in the center of the array between the handle. The tray cover, as currently provided to congregations, is configured such that there are two rows of nine apertures each on each side of the handle.
Referring now to Figure, in this top view of a communion tray cover that is currently in use, one can see thirty-six circular cup retaining apertures 101 and three centrally-positioned empty cup disposal apertures 102-A, 102-B and 102-C. One of the problems associated with the design of tray cover 100 that is currently in use is that as congregants dispose of empty cups into the central openings of the array, drips from those cups can fall into cups containing unconsumed liquid that remain in the circular apertures of the cup array of the tray cover. Given that some of the congregants are invariably sick and capable of communicating their sicknesses to others, the distribution of communion provides an opportunity for the spread of infectious diseases. During the polio epidemic of the early 1900s, this could have been a significant vector in the spread of the disease. Although polio has since been controlled, and infections of the common cold and flu are the ones most likely to be transmitted to others, there is no reason why this vector should not be eliminated altogether. After all, it is not known when a virus or bacterium will mutate and become the cause of a serious epidemic.
What is needed is a new cup array configuration for the tray cover that will reduce the probability that infectious diseases will be spread from infected congregants to those who are uninfected.